Producers bought 203.7 billion cigarettes in 2020, up 0.4% from a 12 months earlier, the Federal Commerce Fee says.
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Esther Moreno Martinez / EyeEm/Getty Photographs/EyeEm
Producers bought 203.7 billion cigarettes in 2020, up 0.4% from a 12 months earlier, the Federal Commerce Fee says.
Esther Moreno Martinez / EyeEm/Getty Photographs/EyeEm
For the primary time in 20 years, cigarette gross sales elevated final 12 months throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as tobacco firms additionally beefed up spending to advertise their merchandise.
The Federal Commerce Fee, in its annual Cigarette Report, mentioned that producers bought 203.7 billion cigarettes in 2020, up from 202.9 billion in 2019 — a rise of 0.4%.
The FTC compiled the report from information submitted by 4 main tobacco firms — Altria Group, the maker of Marlboros; ITG Holdings USA, which makes Winston and Kools; Reynolds American, with manufacturers resembling Camels and Pall Malls; and Vector Group Ltd., maker of Pyramid model cigarettes.
The businesses, the report mentioned, elevated promoting and promotion to $7.84 billion in 2020 from $7.624 billion the earlier 12 months, concentrating the majority of their spending in “worth reductions paid to cigarette retailers as a way to scale back the value of cigarettes to prospects,” the FTC mentioned.
The report didn’t point out if the coronavirus pandemic, and the following lockdowns final 12 months, had something to do with the rise in gross sales, however Bloomberg reported in April 2020 that Altria’s first quarter gross sales had jumped partly because of “bulk purchases — what the corporate calls ‘pantry loading,’ ” suggesting that people who smoke stocked up on cigarettes fearing shortages.
“In 2020, whole nicotine consumption within the U.S. was up 3.4%,” Don Burke, senior vice chairman at Administration Science Associates in Pittsburgh, informed CSP. a convenience-store commerce journal, in August. “So clearly the pandemic had an affect on the general whole nicotine supply class.”
However the improve in gross sales final 12 months appears to be like unlikely to symbolize a long-term pattern. Nielsen’s convenience-store report for a four-week interval ending on March 27 of this 12 months confirmed that general gross sales of conventional cigarettes had been down 4.9%, as reported by The Winston-Salem Journal.
In the meantime, in the identical Nielsen report, gross sales of digital cigarettes had been down barely, though that they had risen 7.5% 12 months over 12 months.
Lately, gross sales of conventional cigarettes have steadily declined, whereas e-cigarettes have seen a surge, significantly amongst minors.
A report by the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention final 12 months indicated that one in 5 highschool college students and greater than 6% of U.S. adults now say they vape.
